jubakumbi

IMO, this boils down to people with curious minds that have passion for this game and therefore cannot make the train of thought be quiet. I have one, some have called my curiosity a ballistic missile. At the start, I got to be the paria because I wanted concrete data on the business front, and I would not back down on several points with which I have differing real-world experience. It's fun! From my PoV, HC in this case is very on the mark. There is simply nothing to give, or the volunteers that are 'doing the things' happen to like to 'do the things' and not write book reports on the things they do because that's not what they volunteered to do, or that they are not trying to add any hype to the pile which will just create more llama-drama, and/or all of the above are great reasons for them to just do the things they like to do with their free time and nothing more. In every endeavor I have participated like this, volunteering my time and energy on a larger project for the fun of the group or community, the fun got sucked out of it like a black hole had appeared at a matter convention when the participants started wanting updates like my hobby was my life. No way, was out in a hot minute. IMO, we should all be taking what we get from them and and asking for nothing more, and I mean nothing more on the creative front. Let the creative parts do what they do, unhindered by hype and everything that comes with it. If you want to play on HC, play on HC. If you want to play on We Have Cake, play on We Have Cake. If you want ... then do what you want. Asking these things to try and help someone choose between servers is really silly as well IMO, they have no obligation to advertise anything in an effort to gain players. Play on them, decide what you like better, do that thing. I hate book reports, I have to do enough of them in my job, would never do one as a hobby - and my wife even reviews books for fun, finally had to stop due to things like this - it just makes more llama-drama, even though the curious minds want all the minutiae, IMO.

Radish.

I simply subscribe to the idea that if it bothered someone enough to make a thread about it, then the intent is 'to turn it into one'. Seen these posts for years and years in all MMOs as I am sure others have. Mostly, I just like to yell loudly that no one should feel even a tiny amount of guilt for having taking charge of thier free time and dropping out of bad teams. No one should be held by peer-pressure-guilt to do anything in the game No one should be allowed to boss around other players. Any hint of that BS, regardless of how pervasive, IMO, should met with 'the fire and fury of a million suns' as it were. I have seen to many 'nice people' in this game and others get shafted by the dicktators. I totally agree in this current incarnation that has happend less than on Live, but the dicktators still play, and should not be rewarded, IMO.

Many of the reasons I choose not to typically team in MMOs are all in this thread... People who assume the other players are like them, poeple who assume that having the star means anything, people who assume I have signed some blood-oath by accepting to be in a TF. It's just a game, full stop. It's my free time, that I will spend how I like, full stop. No one is under any obligation here, full stop. If I am not having fun, I drop team/log out/change characters and get on with my life and I expect the same from all other players. The levels of drama attained by players on a TF or even just a team that think it's some sacred oath being taken to join, or that having the star has any real meaning other than being nice enough to take the time to build the team, are just hillarious to me. Whatever happened to just relaxing and killing a few pixels? Why does it have to be so serious? What on erath makes anyone think they can and should be dicktaing to others? It's not a job.

Blasters

That's why I smiled. You know I poke back. 🙂

I realize it is very difficult for a lot of people to understand there are different thinking people in the world. The simple fact is, not everyone that plays this game falls into the same narrow demographic. Me pointing that out has nothing to do with trying to play devil's advocate and everything to do twith, like everyone else, simply expressing my opinion. Trying to further pigeon-hole it into "Devil's Advocate" is, IMO, simply another veiled attack to try and de-legitimize my opinion. 🙂 Trying force everyone onto the same server will not save the game, IMO. If the only reason someone is playing a game is due to peer pressure from the rest of the playerbase, what's the point? Encourage people to try and play COH because it's fun, rather than just thinking more = better. If the reason someone plays a game is because there are more people, then they are just following the lemming herd, IMO, not playing a game based on its merits. The people that want to play on a more populated server have the tools they need to do so. How is forcing that on _everyone_ some brilliant solution? IMO, the whole argument for these things has always just been extroverts that feel they need a people blanket around them to appease anxiety about having possibly chosen to play something, somewhere, that is somehow 'not popular enough', so they feel they have not made a bad choice.

Never seen a situation where it's not as simple as that...I pick the smallest server and play there, typically encountering less useless drama, more focused play, with more relaxed players. When the places you have to go in an MMO, central hubs, are chock full of players, that's hard to avoid on a popular server. When the player base on a server if chock full of people 'looking to make friends' vs. just relax and play, that can be hard to avoid. So the number of people has mattered multiple times for me and it has been as simple as playing on the lowest population servers. Doing this since MUDs were first played, before they became MMOs, so decades of personal experience tells me the simple plan works great.

STO. To me, in terms of timing abilities, cadence of play, etc. STO feels the closest to me when examining it at a meta-level for gameplay and when actually controlling the player and ships in-game.

The whole 'toxic' thing IME comes from these things being advertised in chat. Just turn it off, it's not that hard, just a couple of clicks and boom, suddenly millions of voices are silenced...if the chat box really offends to that degree, you still have options that do not include sanctioning players simply because they enjoy the game for different reasons. And, finally, we are in a situation now where you can, in fact go make your own server and drag all of the busy-bodies along with you! I bet if you went out of your way to advertise a 'traditional' COH server that restricted all of these things, people would flock to it, right? Oh wait, someone did that and guess what? About 300 players moved and from the numbers I was watching, that was about it, so it's obviously not the most popular outlook.

First thing I usually do in all MMOs is locate the lowest population server and make my home there. If you want to play with a lot of poeple, that's great, transfer to the populated one. There is no reason to force that hell on the rest of us, I remember 'Freedumb' on the live servers, no thanks, I don't need that level of useless drama in my life, much less in my playtime. Not all of us are extroverts that need the influx of social interactions to be happy. Not all of us think in terms of population being an indicator of Fun.

Your memory is faulty and full of accusations that are simply not true. I do love KB. I never, ever stay on teams that don't want KB, be it mine or another team members powers. I take personal responcibility and I simply leave the team. Anyone that likes or dislikes any power or method of play in the game has that option. You will simply not find evidence of me staying on a team that does not like or want my powers, because such evidence does not exist. It became immediately apparent there were too many voices trying to tell others how to play on teams, so after initial runs in the lowbie TFs to get a few levels, I never team. As you so love to tell others, you have stuff in your head about me that is simply, wholly, not accurate. As much as you don't want to play with people who enjoy thier playtime in a different way than you do, I don't want to spend mine with people that have such controlling attitudes. Life is simply too short to have some random gamer tell me how to have fun, or to force my fun on another, so I solo unless I know my playstyle works with ther others on my team, problem solved. Meanwhile, we are all still subjected to those that claim they are saints int he game, but come here to tell the rest of us we are playing the game wrong, be it from PL, skipping content, or just generally not 'earning' our characters because we are not filled with the right amount of Protestant Work Ethic. None of this has changed in years and years on MMO forums, it's a really odd dynamic of controlling personalities desperately trying to convince everyone white-washing the same fence again is fun.

This outlook, IMO, is predicated on a false assumption - that everyone enjoys things in the same way. Views on what is or is not fun content, the complete and total lack of desire to build any relationships in game by people like me, are easy examples of why the things one person finds fun are a chore-bore to others. It's this constant stream of condescending, passive-aggressive 'play the game the right way' message from the busy-bodies that creates the biggest stink in this 'community', IMO. But, what do I know? I am just a cranky old hippie-geek that thinks games should be fun and not yet another way in which one human can boss around another and call it leadership or 'helping'...

In my opinion, posting an opinion on something looking for other opinions to validate your opinion is a passive-aggressive call to arms. I did not call out the OP anyway, TBH, my comment was really directed at the people that think it's OK to get bent out of shape over the crime against humanity it seems to be to not 'know how to play your character the way I like' when they have been power leveled. There are plenty of people that think because I want to talk about motives and reasons that somehow I am being dramatical or extreme. So what? These kinds of topics, obviously trying to somehow make a certain set of players 'bad' because of passive aggressive 'opinions', all just sound like children screaming at each other on an elementary school playground to me anyway, I do enjoy watching them get worked up, schadenfreude is real. I understand the english language just fine, thanks. I understand from the very posts they have made, multiple posters in this thread are judgemental jerks. I understand from playing this game in this community that some people feel they have to control every single pixel on the screen during their playtime or 'someone in doing it wrong', regardless of if they call out playing in the game at that time - they will just do it here on the forums to justify their outlook. My opinion is that if these types of things bother you, then you are the problem. Hope that clears things up! Happy New Year!

I just love that so many people have such a need to control how other people play a video game that they need to come onto a public forum and tell the rest of the world they are playing a game wrong. Not. Why do so many people that play this game think they have to control the other players actions? It really is baffling to me, does this game just attract control-freaks or something? After all these years and we still have these people playing the game with the idea there is a wrong way and right way. It really is sad and deeply troubling to me that so many gamers here want to tell other how to spend their free time. Just play the game the way you like, let other play the game they way they like, done. Sheesh.

Personally, I have always prefered MMOs and other games to ignore the real world, it's the reason I play them in the first place, to step out of real life. I typically play almost nil during all the events in all MMOs, it completely ruins the experience for me. I understand others are into it, I love that it brings them joy, I just find other things to do. So if we put a pendulum in the Atlas City Hall entry over the nice big symbol in the main room, would it kill the tourists because the higher rotational rate?

US companies and US citizens expect this all day, everyday, IME. I work for one full of people right now that all expect everyone else to abide by their particular cultural rules. Every day, all the time, non-stop. There sure are a lot of supposed rational adults that decided the closure of CoH was a direct attack on their personal welfare. The level of martyrdom in this 'community' has always been over-the-top.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

er, can you not see this is a joke? 🤗

Frenzied hair pulling and hand wringing for everyone! We don't play favorites when it comes to creating reasons to worry! 😏

I know you are probably just trying to add humor and levity, but what the GMs do or do not do is none of my concern. I have never and will never look at forum topics as sacrosact, one-trick ponies, like some ruler from on high is going to pee in my cornflakes if I don't stay on topic. 🙂 IMO, this is the real point. Bad actors are bad actors. While it's nice to think we can live in a world where they do not exist, that is a fantasy. No matter the channel, there are people that will find a away around the rules. I work in Fraud. When we see it decrease in one area from an evolution of technology or regulation, the same dollar amount just pops up elsewhere, it never stops. No matter the system, someone will game it. All we can do as moral humans is to treat each other respectfully. It won't change the bad guys to good guys.

Party On!

And part of striking that balance is the idea of limited liability. Human interaction is complicated and no one thing, like LLCs, is the culprit - it's greedy and amoral humans that are the culprits. You cannot fix human nature with some words on a piece of paper. There will alsways be those who use the laws in bad ways, just like people use comupters and TNT in ways that are not healthy for society at large. You cannot remove things that protect tons of people just to go after the bad apples.

A license scheme for the servers is the only real path that I can see occuring; I cannot see NCSoft just walking away from the IP. I would prefer one that allows more, rather than less, different groups to be able to run the game, as in a cheap or free license with few restrictions. At this point, people who want to play privately for free are already doing that and will be able to do so indefinately. A license scheme would simply allow the masses to play without so much fear. Such an interesting series of events to watch unfold...

IME, consumers live for the righteuos outrage they can throw at companies. I have not given NCSoft any money since CoH...but that is mainly because they have not produced anything I wanted to buy, while influenced by my outlook on thier corporate personality to a degree, the shuttering of CoH has not been the long term reason. There are people who post about this game that are somehow still under some delusion the players have a diety-given right to this game and that NCSoft is an evil that must be thwarted, when in fact, it is just a set of code that has found it's way into the public domain through nefariuos means and is still owned by NCSoft. These same posters, IMO, would be on the other side of this coin if they had their own personal data stolen and used like this, which they did when the user DB walked out the door...the end users of the game at that time were also victims of that data-theft. From my PoV, we have a bunch of humans that literally think because the culture behind the company is something they don't like, it's OK for us to steal thier stuff.